I-Con, Comics, Books

[drcpunk]

mnemex and I decided to go to I-Con. My main expense was comics. I got volumes 3-7 of Sanctuary, a 9 volume manga. As womzilla said, it's pulp, but it's good pulp. Y'know, honest trash, and pass me the next volume.

I had vol 2 already, and no one had vol 1. I picked up vol 8 from Cosmic Comics -- and discovered one section was printed twice, resulting in some crucial stuff missing. Well, there's not much non-crucial stuff in these books. Some, but very little. So, we dropped by Forbidden Planet, and I got vols 8, 9 -- and 1! Yay!

I figure the folks at Cosmic will probably be willing to take the book back and give me store credit.

Another comic screw up -- I ordered volume two of Unicorn Jelly, and got a second copy of volume one by mistake. Emailed the author, and we'll hopefully clear that up.

I also got another Megatokyo vol 1 -- the new edition this time. And I picked up two copies of the latest edition of Holly Black's Tithe. Gave one to Beth, and will likely mail one to a friend in Japan.

I prefer the cover of the hardback edition. I think I'm right this time. I had a discussion about a cover change for another book. Steven Brust's Agyar had what I considered the perfect cover when it first came out. The current edition has a cover that I don't like nearly so much -- but that will identify it for its target audience better than the old one. I admit that. And I do want it to do well.

But the current cover of Tithe is different. It's pretty. But it doesn't give as good an idea of what the book is about as the older edition. The older edition had faeries on the cover. The new one has butterfly wings. Pretty ones. I have no quibble with the artistic merit, you understand. And they do have something to do with the book. But it's not as obvious as the new cover of Agyar is for the Brust book. I'm wondering what the marketing rationale is, as I'm likely missing something.

I also dislike the new edition's back cover blurb, which strikes me as marketing the book for a younger age group than I think is its target. Again, I might be wrong here. It's not that Tithe isn't a YA book. It is. And as is the case with the better YA books, Tithe much better than a lot of what one finds in the adult section of the library. But the blurb seems to be pushing for the younger than YA market.

Hm. I'm wondering to what degree Tithe's fans would go for Sanctuary and vice versa. They're -very- different, but if anyone else has read both, tell me if I'm off track here or not.

Regardless, I'm thinking of buying a decent book for an 11 year old, and I know that I definitely would not buy Sanctuary for her. As I don't know her that well, my first instinct is that she's not yet ready for something like Tithe, even if she did devour the Harry Potter books. I'm thinking more like Diana Wynne Jones' Eight Days of Luke, or Neil Gaiman's Coraline, or maybe Roderick Townley's The Great Good Thing. Got to make a trip to Books of Wonder anyway -- I think the fourth book in Spiderwick, also by Holly Black, is out. Spiderwick strikes me as a bit too young for her, though I do wonder if my cousin (who, if I recall correctly, is 9) has gotten around to reading the first book, which I got him some time ago.

Other stuff I did at I-Con: I resisted temptation. Titan Games had some terrific RPG sales. Buy 1, get 3 free on selected rpg products -- that I so didn't need. Buy GURPS Conspiracy X and any one (non-GURPS) of the supplements and get all other 8 supplements for free -- about $300 worth of product for $60. Good stuff too. I reviewed the non-GURPS core book ages ago. Solid game, decent unified explanation of why there are psychic powers, vampire, and other stuff in the game, and it holds together well enough. Trouble is, I'd never read, let alone use, this stuff. I might have broken if we'd actually managed to hook up with nightstalker to get a lift home, but it's just as well. I spent that money on the last 3 volumes I needed of Sanctuary, and that I know I will read.

I worked on Jamais Vu characters. I need to nail 2 more, iron out one kink in a third, and I think I know how, then go over various blue sheets (Blue Sheet = Useful Background Information that some or all players get) and a few walk on / replacement characters. And I really do need to sit down with our Official Nitpicker, Erik Hanson, and have him tell me, "If Character X's sheet says this about Character Y, then Character Y's sheet has to have a note about this."

I napped. I ate chocolate and mushrooms. I ate at The Curry Club again -- same dish as last time, a very yummy lamb with apricots.

I met Jared Sorenson and got the explanation of his various games. I picked up a copy of InSpectres. Didn't get to any demos. I-Con is at Stony Brook, but the hotel isn't, and the filking is in the hotel, so post-dinner activities at Stony Brook are a challenge. And food is a challenge. mnemex said of some aspect of the convention, "They don't go out of their way to make it easy." We agreed that this applies to the con in general.

Dropped money at Larry Smith's table, getting the latest Stevermer -- a sequel to A College of Magics -- John M. Ford's latest collection (sure, I have half the stuff in it in other collections, but so what?), the first volume of Dunsany's Jorkens stories, and a Heyer novel. Gotta find time to read them.

Didn't do much reading of Irvine's A Scattering of Jades, but am back to reading it now. It really is Tim Powersesque. Not a slavish imitation or even a non-slavish one, but I am wondering: If I were given a Powers passage I'd never read and an Irvine passage I'd never read, would I be able to identify which was which?

Comments

[acrobatty.livejournal.com]

You know, I don't know a lot about the publishing industry, but I do know it's pretty small potatoes compared to, say, film. I doubt they have the money to do much at all in the way of audience tests for projected cover designs. Most cover designs are probably decided primarily by the time-honored method of "Nancy, see who's free to do a cover this week, willya?" Or something at about that level of careful thought.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, sure. Dunno about Tithe, but I am pretty sure both covers for Agyar were carefully chosen. The old, as I said, was perfect. The new is a deliberate marketing decision that I don't like, but that makes solid sense.

The Tithe cover is not bad. I just prefer the old cover and think it makes more sense. I could see you being right about it, but I could also see it being a deliberate decision.